Birds of Prey (TV series)

Birds of Prey (2002-2003) was a short-lived live-action television series loosely based on the female heroines of the DC Comics universe, specifically the Birds of Prey loosely associated with Batman and Gotham City.

Alfred Pennyworth: Legend tells of a caped crusader, Batman, guardian of New Gotham, and his one true love, Catwoman, the queen of the criminal underworld. Their passion left behind something extraordinary: a daughter, Huntress. Half metahuman, she has taken up her father's mantle and fights to protect the innocent and helpless. Joining her in this struggle: Oracle, once Batman's protégé, Batgirl, she was caught in the crossfire of the war between Batman and Joker. Now she fights crime a different way, a master of the cyber-realms and trainer to heroes. Together, they have taken in Dinah, a metahuman herself, with powers that she is only beginning to explore. These three are the protectors of New Gotham: the Birds of Prey. My name is Alfred Pennyworth and this is their story.

Helena: I shoved him to get him out of the way, barely even touched the guy.

Dr. Quinzel: And why were you in such a hurry?

Helena: I don't know, I had things to do.

Dr. Quinzel: I understand that whatever it was seemed urgent to you-

Helena: No, you don't understand. You don't know me. You don't know anything about me. Let's just run the clock out here and call it good.

Dr. Quinzel: I do know that on this day, seven years ago, you watched your mother die. And a few months later, Barbara Gordon became your legal guardian. There's no mention of your father.

Helena: Because at the time, I didn't know who he was.

Dr. Quinzel: But you do now?

Helena: ...Bruce Wayne is my father.

Dr. Quinzel:[suprised] Your father... is one of the wealthiest men in the country, and you move in with a schoolteacher?

Helena: Wasn't exactly Father Knows Best - He didn't know he had a kid. Clueless is a radical understatement.

Dr. Quinzel: Sounds like your relationship with your father is conflicted.

Helena:[snorts] What relationship? He didn't raise me, my mom did. I miss her. She... She was funny, crazy, and dangerous... and in that one moment, she was gone. That's when everything changed. I changed.

Dr. Quinzel: Into what?

Helena: Into someone maybe I wasn't meant to be.

Helena: I'm telling you, word on the street are that these deaths are your garden-variety "goodbye, cruel world." Is there anything to eat in here?

Barbara: The way they did it, it's almost as if they were running from something...

Helena: There's never any food. Gazillion dollars worth of computer equipment and not one jar of peanut butter!

Barbara: This doesn't make any sense. If I were gonna kill myself-

Helena: You wouldn't.

Barbara:[taken aback] What?

Helena: Kill yourself. You wouldn't. [holds up some crackers] Do you know how old these are?

Barbara:[splutters] Wait, what do you mean, I wouldn't kill myself?

Helena: It's just not your nature.

Barbara:[rolls away from her desk] I resent that. I'm as broody and romantically self-destructive as the next girl!

Helena: Yeah, in a "Let's go get the bad guys, let nothing stand in the path of the mission" sort of way! You know, I'm the one that does all the night sweeps, I'm the one that does all the fieldwork, I'm the one with bruises in really embarrassing places - Would it kill you to go to the grocery store every once in a while‽

Barbara: ...What is this obsession with food?

Helena: You try fighting the forces of evil when your blood sugar's low!

Dinah:[grins] It's you! I should have known you two would be together! [Helena and Barbara stare at her] Look.... Sometimes when I touch people, I see things. Things that, um, that only they know. And sometimes, when I dream things, they come true.

Dinah: So, um, what does this thing do exactly?

Barbara: This machine will tell me if there's any biological evidence of the abilities. In other words, if you're metahuman.

Dinah: Metawhat?

Barbara: In most people, less than 5% percent of neural cells are active. Your cerebral cortex activity is... [surprised] over 50%.

Dinah:So it's true. I'm officially a freak.

Helena: Hey, watch it with the f-word.

Barbara: There are people in the world, Dinah a lot of people, with abilities beyond what we think of as human. No two metahumans have the same gifts. Don't ask me where the powers come from, no one knows. Natural mutations, biological experiments...

Dinah: ...Do you think I'd get on a bus and come to a city where I didn't know a soul, with no money and no job... if I had a place to go back to? I mean, I came to New Gotham looking for something, and I didn't even know what it was, but now I do!

Helena: After my mother's death, I learned more than just my father's identity - I learned he had a whole other life.

Dr. Quinzel: I'm not sure I understand. Do you mean another family?

Helena: More like a... really aggressive hobby.

Dr. Quinzel: A dangerous one.

Helena:Uh... Yeah. I guess a part of me I blamed him for what happened to my mother. If Barbara hadn't taken me in...

Dr. Quinzel: Why did she do that?

Helena: I've known her since I was kid. She was just trying to help.

Dr. Quinzel: Human beings are essentially selfish creatures, Helena. No matter how we try and mask it to the world or ourselves. You say Barbara rescued you. Did she do that for you? Or for herself?

[Huntress is handcuffed to a statue at a crime scene]

Huntress: Okay, I really don't have time for this...

Detective Reese: You're in a crime scene, lady; You'll make time!

Huntress: You can see it's a suicide.

Detective Reese: Yeah, seem to be a lot of those going around lately, huh? You know, my colleagues, they think I'm crazy. But I'm beginning to wonder if somebody isn't giving these vics a little push!

Huntress:[into her comm, to Oracle] You'd like this guy, he's got your paranoid turn of mind.

Detective Reese: Excuse me? What was that?

Huntress: I didn't say anything.

Oracle: Neighbors reported sounds of a fight. He must have been in the area to have gotten there so fast. You have a few minutes before the black-and-whites show up, just... get out of there.

Detective Reese: So, you know this man?

Huntress: He was dead when I got here.

Detective Reese:[sceptically] Really? Oh, so then the best you can say for yourself is you were robbing a dead guy.

Huntress: You're a detective; Detect - What was I gonna do? Strap a few paintings on my back, take the elevator? I don't have any gear for a heist and I don't have any weapons. What did I do, come in here and chat him into hanging himself?

Detective Reese: Even if I were to believe you, you still haven't answered my question; What are you doing here?

Huntress:[serious] Same thing you are - Just trying to save someone. Guess we were both a little too late. We're on the same side, Reese.

Oracle: Now, wait just a minute!

Huntress:[to Oracle:] I know what I'm doing, back off.

Detective Reese:[confused] Do you hear voices or something?

Huntress: You have no idea. Someone dropped the Hermez shooter off at the precinct doorstep last week, right? [Reese frowns] And the Dorsett kidnapper? I practically gift-wrapped that one for you.

Detective Reese:[aims his gun at her] Who are you?

Huntress:[twists her hand in the cuffs] I'm not your enemy.

Detective Reese: What, I'm supposed to believe you're a friend?

Huntress: I didn't say that. [kicks Reese's gun away, and tosses him the handcuffs. In a flash, she's at the window] I hate locks.

Detective Reese: So you save people.

Huntress: On good days.

Detective Reese: Then why don't you carry any weapons?

Huntress: I am the weapon. [winks and jumps off the balcony]

Dinah: You've been here before, haven't you?

Barbara: It was a long time ago. Another life. Before I was ever Oracle, I had another name, another identity. Another self. I used to work with a man, Helena's father. He was Gotham's greatest champion, and most people never even knew he existed. The last time I ever fought at his side was in this place. We'd cornered the worst criminal Gotham had ever known, smashed his organization and hunted him down. I know Batman could have killed the Joker but he didn't. And his honor had a price. The Joker got away from the police, only for a few hours, just long enough to send a man to kill Helena's mother and to come for me himself.

Dinah: Why?

Barbara: I think the Joker wanted to drive Batman mad. And maybe he did a little. Because a few months later, he left. Left New Gotham, his work... Everything. Even the daughter he never knew he had.

Harley: [to Ketterly] Well, Larry... This really is quite the disappointment, isn't it? I needed those documents, Larry. I had a dream of New Gotham, and people writhing in pain, dying on the streets and everything under my command. You ruined my dream, Larry. At least temporarily. What happened, Larry? I wish you could tell me. Because somebody stopped you and that means somebody is trying to stop me. Well, just goes to show you: never send a business man to do a psychopath's job.

Dr. Quinzel: Luckily for you, this is your last court-mandated session.

Helena: Then I must be officially sane. What a relief.

Dr. Quinzel: You don't have to come back, unless you want to. I know you think you can't trust anyone but I'd like to help you, if you'd let me. Why is it so difficult for you to let people in, Helena?

Helena:[beat] After Mom was killed I found out about my dad, who he was.

Dr. Quinzel: Well, most people would be excited to discover that a billionaire philanthropist like Bruce Wayne was their father.

Helena: I only wanted one thing from him: That he find the man that killed my mother.

Dr. Quinzel: And then?

Helena: And then I wanted that man dead.

Dr. Quinzel: We can't just go around killing people, Helena.

Helena: Yeah, that's... That's what I hear. All I wanted from him was revenge. If it had been the other way, Mom would've done it. They hadn't been together in years. She would've killed for him. And that's when I learned what my mom always knew: Rely on no one but yourself.

Helena:[about Dinah I think she's evil.

Barbara: You think she could be evil? If you would just take your clothes home once in a while, instead of leaving them all over the Clocktower, she wouldn't have found your sweater to begin with. You know what, this is not about clothing, and you know it.

Helena: Easy for you to say, she's not poaching your daywear!

Barbara: Her parents didn't even report her missing; Sounds like she had a reason to run away.

Helena: Still don't know what that was.

Barbara: She's got incredible potential. I just have this gut feeling that-

Helena: So do I. Like I'm about to get sucker-punched.

Barbara: Helena, think about how we learned. How we all learned; Dick Grayson, Tim Drake, Jason Todd, even you - It's more than a tradition, it's a legacy; Take in those like us, mentor and train them, never turn away someone with the hunger to become what we are. That's what your father would have done.

Helena: Batman was your role model, not mine.

Barbara:[beat] Yeah, you keep saying that...

Helena: I told you trust had to be earned and I was wrong: Trust is a gift. You were there for me when it mattered for both of us. And as for the rest of it, it's an act of faith believing in someone. I believe in you. Whatever your name is.

Dinah: Redmond. My name is Dinah Redmond, and I have been lying to you about everything. My mother left me with foster parents when I was six, and they taught me to be ashamed of what I was, never to tell anyone, to hide it. Then, when I couldn't hide it anymore, they were gonna take me somewhere. Somewhere to make my powers stop. And I thought if I told you my real name that you'd call them, and they'd take me away.

Helena: Dinah, don't you ever wanna go home?

Dinah: Being here, with you, it is the only place I have ever, ever felt at home in my entire life.

Dr. Quinzel: Helena! What can I do for you?

Helena: I've been rethinking this whole do-everything-by-myself thing. and I've decided I want to continue therapy. even though I don't have to. Maybe a little help sometimes isn't... so bad.

Dr. Quinzel: Please, come in.

[Helena smiles and goes to sit on a chair, as Dr. Quinzel shuts the door]

Detective Morton: I'm not your kind. You're a monster! And as long as even one of you exists, I'm a freak! This pain in my head comes from you! Every time I get near one of you, I change into something... I don't wanna be. Into something that I hate! So, I am going to destroy all of you. And when the last one of you dies I'll be normal. I'll be free!

Huntress: And I'm the one in therapy.

Huntress:If you wanna know if I killed him... I didn't, he jumped. You look terrible.

Detective Reese: And you don't.

Huntress: Another perk of the meta lifestyle, I heal quick. On the outside, anyway. [moves towards Reese] I can't decide if I should thank you for not shooting me or beat you senseless for drawing a gun on me. You know things like me are dangerous and violent.

Detective Reese: Are you saying that you aren't dangerous and violent?

Huntress: Absolutely, I am. But not because I'm meta.

Detective Reese:[sighs] Look... I'm just... I'm not used to-

Huntress: No. It's time for you to listen: Metahumans are just people. Not all metas are bad, just like not all cops are good. There's lot of metahuman criminals in New Gotham. Because there's a lot of criminals here, period. And as for me, I'm half-meta and I'm half-human and I am proud of both.

Detective Reese: I never thought you killed him. But, beat him to a bloody pulp? That one crossed my mind a few times. [beat] Hey... Why won't you just tell me your name?

Huntress: ...'Cause the first time we met, you asked me who I was - But last night, you asked me what I was. I won't tell you my name; You haven't earned it.

Dinah: Gibson's so great.

Helena: Yeah, give him time.

Dinah: Hey, how'd the thing with Wade's folks go?

Barbara: Short version? Complete and utter parental rejection.

Dinah: Well, they just don't know you.

Helena: Not any more than Reese knows me.

Barbara: And we can't really tell them, can we?

Dinah: What do you think it's like for Morton? You know, to hate yourself so much?

Helena: He didn't understand. It's not what you are, it's who.

Dinah: Hey, what do you say we head down to Gibson's, the three of us misfits?

Barbara:[smiles] I think we deserve a night out. Helena?

Helena:[grins] Damn straight. And I can't think of a better place to spend it. Gibson's it is.

Harley: Let me explain something to you, Dr. Melfin: I know I may look like the ultimate career woman, but all this, it means nothing to me. I'm unfulfilled. The Joker and I always wanted kids. Me and my Mr. J, we would have had such beautiful children. My green eyes and his green hair. Instead, the best I could do was to have you custom-make this baby for me and you lost him. My biological clock is ticking, Melfin, and it's a bomb!

Dinah: And not just any superhero, you're the Black Canary! You're supposed to be some some big role model, a trailblazer, one of the first women to put on a crime-fighting cape!

Carolyn: Actually, I don't wear a cape, I... Never mind, how do you know all of this?

Dinah: Well, in case you haven't noticed, I'm living with Barbara Gordon also known as the Oracle. It's part of my training, sort of like Superheroes 101... The tradition and history you conveniently forgot to mention before you dumped me‽ [flippant] But, y'now, I guess being one of the greatest espionage agents in the world, having a 6-year-old kid kind of cramped your style.

Carolyn: I did not dump you. I was trying to protect you, I was trying to give you a normal life.

Dinah:[angry] So, it's normal for foster parents to lock their kids in closets until they promise to stop seeing things?

Carolyn: Dinah, When I left you with the Redmonds, I didn't think you had metahuman potential! You were six years old, you didn't show any signs! I hoped-

Dinah: You hoped that what? If I was metahuman, they'd beat it out of me‽

Carolyn: ...It was the worst mistake of my life. I found out you ran away, and that's when I discovered... what had been happening. Dinah, please try to understand; I thought you were happy. I thought you were living like a regular kid... I had no idea.

Dinah:Right.

Carolyn: I'm retired, Dinah. I'm not Black Canary anymore. I'm just Caroline Lance. I came to New Gotham to find you and I would like to be your mother.

Carolyn: The life you think you want, Dinah, being a superhero is not what it's cracked up to be: [Dinah sighs in annoyance] It's dangerous, it's ugly, it is relentless, and it will wear you down! I won't let you throw your future away.

Dinah:[angrily] Oh, yeah? Well, you gave up the right to make decisions for me a long time ago! [to Helena and Barbara] I'm staying at Gabby's tonight. We're studying. [to Carolyn] You know, like normal kids? [leaves]

Barbara: She'll be okay. She just needs to cool down.

Carolyn: I just don't understand how Oracle, the source of all information, could have my daughter under her roof and not even know it.

Barbara: She gave us her foster parents' last name. I ran a background check, okay? She was clearly having problems at home. My God, Caroline, this is what we do. We take in and mentor those like us-

Carolyn: She's not like you!

Helena: How would you know that? How would you know anything about her?

Carolyn: I'd appreciate it if you stayed out of this.

Helena: ...You got a problem with me?

Carolyn: I'm sure you're a nice enough person, but you are the daughter of a thief.

Helena:Excuse me?

Carolyn: Just stay away from my daughter. The last thing she needs right now is your influence.

[Carolyn walks away. Helena makes a move to go after her]

Barbara: Helena, wait. [grabs Helena's arm]

Helena:What is her problem‽

Barbara: It's not about you. Canary and your mom never really got along. I think it was some sort of bird-cat thing. Just let it go. [leaves]

Helena: Bird-cat thing. Right.

Barbara:[talking about Dinah] She could be every bit as great as you.

Carolyn: And she could get shot at before breakfast, tortured before lunch, and knocked unconscious for dinner also like me.

Helena:(Discussing Dinah) What are you gonna do when she's out past curfew? Blast her with your Canary Cry?

Helena: I never knew this part of her. She gave up being Catwoman when I was born. You know, that was the thing about running with a gang the thrill, the rush... It was like I was finally getting to spend time with her; The side of my mother I never knew.

Dinah: To give that up, she must've loved you so much.

Helena: Canary loved you, Dinah, you know that. She loved you so much, she gave her life for you.

Huntress: Yes, there is. You have saved me so many times, it's my turn. When my mom died, you told me something that I didn't understand until right now: You told me, revenge might dull the pain but the less we felt, the less we were.

Barbara: It was a lie!

Huntress: No, it wasn't. Barbara, this is my last chance to get forgiveness for what I did. If I could give my life to have Wade back, you know I would... But I can't. Barbara, we don't kill, no matter what. I can't let you do this. It makes us less. It makes us less.

Barbara: You know who you are, Helena.

Helena: Yeah. I kind of feel like... maybe now I do. Maybe I'm not Batman's little girl anymore. Sometimes I feel like he's watching... looking over my shoulder. Looking down on all of us.

Dinah: Kind of like a big guardian bat!

Helena:[laughs] Kinda! Kind of like that.

[Last lines of the series]

Alfred: Master Bruce, I thought you might want to know; your daughter's doing rather well. You would be most proud. Most proud indeed.